Calathrinan Empire
The Calthrinan Empire, also known as Calathrina, is a country in northern Eurasia. It is an aboslute semi-parilamentary empire with 9 Governornates, 1 Imperial District, and two semi-autonomous divisions (the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Kingdom of Poland). The Empire is bordered by Norway, Sweeden, the Federal Republic of Poland, the Slavic States, Romania, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan (by the Sea of Okhotsk) and the United States (by the Bering Strait). At 22 million kilometers, Calathrina is by far the largest country in the world, covering more then a sixth of the Earth's total land area. Calathrina is also the third most populous nation on Earth with 660 million inhabitants. It extends across the whole of northern and central Asia and more then 46% of Europe, spanning 14 time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Calathrina has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources, and is considered an energy superpower. It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water. Calathrina has the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and also the world's largest military budget. It is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Calathrina is a permanent member of the World Assembly Security Council, a member of the G8, G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Eurasian Economic Community, and is the leading member of the Commonwealth of Monarchies. The Calathrinan nation has a long tradition of excellence in every aspect of the arts and sciences, as well as a strong tradition in technology, including such significant achievements as the first human spaceflight. Geography Calathrina is the largest county in the world, covering 22,400,000 square kilometres, or about 1/6th of the earth's landmass; it has no rival in size. As with its topography, Calathrina's climates, vegetation, and soils span vast distances. The country contains 43 WAESCO World Heritage Sites, 49 WAESCO Biosphere reserves, 48 National Parks and 106 nature reserves. Calathrina has a wide natural resource base, including major deposits of timber, petroleum, natural gas, coal, ores and other mineral resources. Topography The two widest separated points in Calathrina are about 8,000 km (4,971 mi) apart along a geodesic line. These points are: the area between Calathrian Belarus and the Kingdom of Poland, and also the spit of land streching from Calathrian Lithuania to northeastern Royal Poland; and the farthest southeast of the Kuril Islands, a few miles off Hokkaidō Island, Japan. The points which are furthest separated in longitude are 6,600 km (4,101 mi) apart along a geodesic. These points are: in the west, the same spit; in the east, the Big Diomede Island (Ostrov Ratmanova). The Calathrinan Empire spans 14 time zones. With access to three of the world's oceans — the Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific — Calathrian fishing fleets are a major contributor to the world's fish supply. The Caspian is the source of what is considered one of the finest caviar in the world. Most of Calathrina consists of vast stretches of plains that are predominantly steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Calathrina possesses 18% of the world's arable land. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, which at 5,642 m (18,510 ft) is the highest point in both Calanthrina and Europe) and the Altai; and in the eastern parts, such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The Ural Mountains, rich in mineral resources, form a north-south range that divides Europe and Asia. Calathrina has an extensive coastline of over 37,000 km (22,991 mi) along the Arctic and Pacific Oceans, as well as along the Baltic Sea, Sea of Azov, Black and Caspian seas. The Barents Sea, White Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea, Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk, and the Sea of Japan are linked to Calanthrina via the Arctic and Pacific oceans. Calthrina's major islands and archipelagos include: Novaya Zemlya, the Franz Josef Land, the Severnaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, the Kuril Islands, and Sakhalin. The Diomede Islands (one controlled by Calthrina, the other by the United States) are just 3 km (1.9 mi) apart, and Kunashir Island is about 20 km (12.4 mi) from Hokkaidō. Calanthrina has tens of thousands of rivers and inland bodies of water, providing it with one of the world's largest surface water resources. The largest and most prominent of Calanthrina's bodies of fresh water is Lake Baikal, the world's deepest, purest, oldest and most capacious freshwater lake. Lake Baikal alone contains over one fifth of the world's fresh surface water. Other major lakes include Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega, two of the largest lakes in Europe, as well as Lake Bakialish, the world's only lake located in a desert. Calanthrina is second only to Brazil in volume of total renewable water resources, and by 2012 is expected to superpass it in these terms. Of the country's 130,000 rivers, the Volga is the most famous, not only because it is the longest river in Europe, but also because of its major role in Calanthrian history. Climate The climate of the Calathrinan Empire formed under the influence of several determining factors. The enormous size of the country and the remoteness of many areas from the sea result in the dominance of the humid continental and subarctic climate, which is prevalent in European and Asian Calanthrina except for the tundra and the extreme southeast. Mountains in the south obstruct the flow of warm air masses from the Indian Ocean, whilst the plain of the west and north makes the country open to Arctic and Atlantic influences. Throughout much of the territory there are only two distinct seasons — winter and summer; spring and autumn are usually brief periods of change between extremely low temperatures and extremely high. The coldest month is January (February on the shores of the sea), the warmest usually is July. Great ranges of temperature are typical. In winter, temperatures get colder both from south to north and from west to east. Summers can be quite hot and humid, even in Siberia, but mainly in Central Asia and near Turkey and Iran. A small part of the Black Sea coast around Sochi has a subtropical climate. The continental interiors are the driest areas. Flora and fauna From north to south the East European Plain, also known as Calathrinan Plain, is clad sequentially in Arctic tundra, coniferous forest (taiga), mixed and broad-leaf forests, grassland (steppe), and semi-desert (fringing the Caspian Sea), as the changes in vegetation reflect the changes in climate. Siberia supports a similar sequence but largely is taiga. Russia has the world's largest forest reserves, known as "the lungs of Europe", second only to the Amazon Rainforest in the amount of carbon dioxide it absorbs. There are 286 mammal species and 799 bird species in Calathrina. A total of 1,115 animal species have been included in the Red Data Book of the Calanthrinan Empire as of 1997 and are now protected. History Early history The earliest Human bones date from around 65,000 years ago. It was found along the Don river banks. During prehistoric times, the vast steppes of southern and western modern-day Calanthrina was inhabited by nomadic travelers. During the times of the Greek States and Roman Empire, Calanthrina was known as Unkonkius Landica en Eastinum, or literally Unknown Lands in the East. Remnants of these steppe civilizations were discovered in such places as Ipatovo, Sintashta, Arkaim, and Pazyryk, which bear the earliest known traces of mounted warfare, a key feature in nomadic way of life. In the latter part of the 8th century BC, Greek traders brought classical civilization to the trade emporiums in Tanais and Phanagoria. Between the third and sixth centuries BC, the Bosporan Kingdom, a Hellenistic polity which succeeded the Greek colonies, was overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions, led by warlike tribes, such as the Huns and Turkic Avars. A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled the lower Volga basin steppes between the Caspian and Black Seas until the 8th century. The ancestors of modern Calanthrinans are the Slavic tribes, whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pinsk Marshes. Moving into the lands vacated by the migrating Germanic tribes, the Early East Slavs gradually settled Western Calanthrina in two waves: one moving from Kiev toward present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk toward Novgorod and Rostov. From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Calanthrina and slowly but peacefully assimilated the native Finno-Ugric tribes, including the Merya, the Muromians, and the Meshchera. Kievan Vargania In the 9th century, the state of Kievan Vargania, located in Kiev, was established, becoming the predesscor to the Kingdom in Calanthrina, and is argubly the first state to encompass a sizeable area of Calanthrina. Scandinavian Norsemen, called "Vikings" in Western Europe and "Varangians" in the East, combined piracy and trade in their roamings over much of Europe. In the mid-9th century, they ventured along the waterways extending from the eastern Baltic to the Black and Caspian Seas. According to the earliest Calathrinan chronicle, a Varangian from the Kiev' people, named Rurik, was elected ruler (konung or knyaz) of Novgorod in 862. His successor Oleg the Prophet moved his operations south and conquered Kiev in 882, which had been previously dominated by the Khazars; so the state of Kievan Vargania started. Oleg, Rurik's son Igor and Igor's son Svyatoslav subsequently subdued all East Slavic tribes to Kievan rule, destroyed the Khazar khaganate and launched several military expeditions to Byzantium. In the 10th to 11th centuries Kievan Vargania became the largest and most prosperous state in Europe. The reigns of Vladimir the Great (980–1015) and his son Yaroslav I the Wise (1019–1054) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Calantakya Pravda. In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchaks and the Pechenegs, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye. The age of feudalism and decentralization had come, marked by constant in-fighting between members of the princely family that ruled the Koung''dom collectively. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod in the north-west and Galicia-Volhynia in the south-west. Ultimately Vargania disintegrated, with the final blow being the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240, that resulted in the destruction of Kiev and the death of about a half of total population of Kiev's. The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which pillaged the Calathrinan principalities and ruled the southern and central expanses of Calanthrina for over three centuries, impeding the country's economic and social development. Galicia-Volhynia was eventually assimilated by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while the Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal-Calanthrina and the independent Novgorod Republic, two regions on the periphery of Kiev, established the basis for the modern Calathrinan nation. The Novgorod Republic together with Pskov retained some degree of autonomy during the time of the Mongol yoke and were largely spared the atrocities that affected the rest of the country. Led by Alexander Nevsky, Novgorodians repelled the invading Swedes in the Battle of the Neva in 1240, as well as the Germanic crusaders in the Battle of the Ice in 1242, breaking their attempts to colonize the Northern Kiev's. Grand Duchy of Moscow-Calanthrina The most powerful successor state to Kievan Vargania was the Grand Duchy of Moscow-Calanthrina, initially a part of Vladimir-Suzdal-Calanthrina. While still under the domain of the Mongol-Tatars and with their connivance, Moscow began to assert its influence in Western Calanthrina in the early 14th century. Assisted by the Calathrinan Orthodox Church and Saint Sergius of Radonezh's spiritual revival, under the leadership of Prince Dmitri Donskoy of Moscow, the united army of Calathrinan principalities inflicted a milestone defeat on the Mongol-Tatars in the Battle of Kulikovo (1380). Moscow gradually absorbed the surrounding principalities, including eventually the strong rivals, such as Tver and Novgorod, and thus became the main leading force in the process of Calanthrina's reunification and expansion. Ivan III (Ivan the Great) finally threw off the control of the Tatar invaders, consolidated the whole of Central and Northern Vargania under Moscow's dominion, and was the first to take the title "grand duke of all the Calanthrinas". After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Calanthrina claimed succession to the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire. Ivan III married Sophia Palaiologina, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, and made the Byzantine double-headed eagle his own, and eventually Calathrinan, coat-of-arms. Kingdom of Calanthrina To assume his authority and confirm Calanthrina as the sucesscor of Rome, the Grand Duke Ivan IV (''the Terrible) was offically crowned the first King of Calanthrina in 1547, thus forming the predessscor of the modern state, the Kingdom of Calanthrina. The King progmulated a new code of laws (Sudebnik of 1550), established the first Calathrinan feudal representative body (Zemsky Sobor) and introduced local self-management into the rural regions. During his long reign, King Ivan IV nearly doubled his already large Calanthrinan territory by annexing the three remaining Tatar khanates (parts of the disintergrated Golden Horde), the Khanates of Kazania and Astrakhana along the Volga, and the Khanate of Sibir in southwestern Siberia. Thus by the end of the 16th century Calathrina was transformed into a multiethnic, multiconfessional and transcontinental state, which it remains to this day, abilet larger. Category:Calthrinan Empire Category:Parilamentary Governments Category:Aboslute Monarchies Category:National Monarchies Category:Empires Category:Nations Category:Powerful Countries Category:Mineral Powers Category:Energy Superpowers Category:Economic Powerhouses Category:Great Powers